by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Indigenous Peoples' Day, a day set aside in the United States to celebrate and honor indigenous peoples along with their histories and cultures. President Joe Biden officially proclaimed the observance two years ago in 2021 and it is now officially celebrated on the second Monday in October, the same day on which the Federal Government shuts itself down to observe Columbus Day.
And yes, Virginia, Columbus Day is still an official thing - a holiday basically honoring Italian-American heritage while trying to overlook more than five centuries of the savage mistreatment of America's original settlers.
That's the way it is. The first human settlers of this vast continent, the ones who carefully shared and shepherded its resources, now share a holiday with the man who led the invasion that stripped all of the country's vast wealth and beauty away from them, the man who brought disease, gold fever, and the concept of slavery to these once idyllic shores.
No one represents the downfall and plight of indigenous Americans more than a federal prisoner in Florida by the name of Leonard Peltier. Peltier, now 78, is a frail old man who is in a maximum security prison in Florida. He suffers from diabetes, hypertension, and partial blindness from a stroke and an abdominal aortic aneurysm. He has also recently undergone a bout with COVID.
There was a shooting at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975 that resulted in the deaths of two FBI agents and the arrest and trial of several people, Peltier being one on them. His co-defendants were all acquitted based on various degrees of cooperation with the government and claims of self-defense. During Peltier's trial the government withheld a ballistics report that said the fatal bullets did not come from Peltier's gun. When the dust of the trial settled Leonard Peltier was the only person on whom the government was able to obtain a conviction - one which said he had "aided and abetted" in the killing of the FBI agents. To this day no one has been accused of committing the actual murders, although the FBI still refers to Peltier as the murderer of its two agents.
Peltier's trial featured many errors which have been played and replayed in the press over the nearly five decades that he has been in prison, including the retention of one juror who admitted to a prejudice against Native Americans on the second day of the trial. Peltier's release on both procedural and humanitarian grounds has been sought over the years by many noteworthy organizations like Amnesty International, as well as scores of humanitarians like Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandala, and Bishop Desmond Tutu. Joe Biden and all of his successors who have served in the White House during the years of Peltier's imprisonment have routinely turned a deaf ear to all requests for mercy, compassion, and even just basic fairness in this case.
Former FBI agent Coleen Rowley, at one time an agency insider, called for clemency for Leonard Peltier earlier this year. Rowley said that the FBI's stubborn opposition to Peltier's release was driven by "vindictiveness."
America's longest serving political prisoner is seeking clemency and a new trial, one which would be decades removed from all of the prejudicial noise that swamped the justice system in the late 1970's, but the FBI and the government remain firm in their belief that justice was served - and must continue to be served - regardless of a lack of any hard evidence pointing to Leonard Peltier as the person who actually shot and killed two FBI agent in 1975.
Joe Biden has proclaimed a holiday - and that holiday would be a great time to go back and correct a long-standing vendetta that our country has relentlessly pursued against one tired and lonely old man who wants nothing more than a couple of years of freedom to die wrapped in the warmth of his family.
Show some backbone, Joe, and some mercy!
Free Leonard Peltier!
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